Over the last couple of days a few of us here in Sydney have received some aweful news about our big mate Col. Some of you met Col at the Speed week event at Sandy Point in Vic several weeks ago.

Col has sustained an injury whie kitesurfing in waves at Geraldton in WA that has resulted in him losing sight in one eys and having only 70% vision in the other. He has had 2 ops, the prognosis at best is minimal vision MIGHT return to the blinded eye (he may be able to see shadows), and he may get a further improvement in the eye that has 70% vision now, over the next couple of weeks.

He has been a good mate to many people in Sydney, and has been a real and positive contributor to maintaining access on Botany bay.

Col has spent his life helping other people, so lets help him in a dire time of need.

We are going to start an appeal, and details will be posted ASAP here about how to make a donation.

Col will be unable to work for a while and may never be able to return to the surveillance work he did in Sports clubs around Sydney.I don't even want to think about whether he will be able to kite again.

For those that want to send some money to Col just to help him out and enable him to relax a bit and get some healing time.Click on the link above and follow the instructions.You only need an email address to do it, having a credit card will make it faster and easier. Cols email address is cjpacker(at)optusnet.com.au take out the (at) and substitute @

Alternately, send me a PM and ask for the Kitepower bank details, we will reply with a/c details and directions to mark the donation "CJ Packer".

Col called me this morning. It was a bit difficult for me to talk to him in the shop so I went upstairs and had a quiet chat with him.

Cols says he is feeling fine and none of you should worry for him (but we will anyway!), and that he is dealing with the misfortune and just wearing sunnies day and night.He can partially see out of the one, right, eye and although he has some floaters and some milkiness in the eye he reckons its about 70-75% working, but at times its hard to see. His left eye has no vision.

He will be back on Monday in Sydney and has a specialist to see, also Tim Lewis's sister is a specialist too and Tim has kindly offered for Col to see his sis for a second opinion if he wants to.

I told Col about the appeal, he is a bit embarassed by it but I know he will appreciate any help you can give him!

He asked for people to understand that he finds it hard to text, and he sometimes does not feel like answering the phone, but he is loving all the support, so keep calling but maybe leave the texting for now ok mates?

Looking out my window, its 15ish and NE, Col would normally have been here to tell me where he was going out...................

Best wishes to Col. I hope he recovers fully, or at least so we see him on the water again.

How did this happen exactly?Head injury or was the water an issue?

Good luck mate!Aloha

Provided Col gets back vision in one eye good enough to judge distance he will be back on the water I reckon, he may have to stop the 30+ footer jumps and stick with a bit less height and stay out of the waves, but I reckon he will be back.

He was kiting in waves, got caught by a set wave somehow and smacked into it, not sure of the exact details just yet, anyway when he surfaced he thought he had seaweed wrapped around his head, somehow he made it back to shore and had a mate check in his eyes. Apparently nothing looked wrong, they went to a hospital, and the doctors did not pick up on the detached retinas, but said to come back tomorrow when a specialist was in town, its the delay that cost him his eyesight most likely, damned unlucky!!He was in a fairly remote area of Western Australia.

So the cause was more of a sudden change of direction of his head, caused by the mass of moving water in a big wave, combined with his speed moving towards the moving water.

He may have had a bit of a history of it, he was an active police officer for for a few decades??

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